.P56 



• ; ■■:•:■■•■:- ::;; : ;:;-:.;: ■•■■•••■■■;:::;:;■•. . .- r. ;..;:: : ■■:■:■'■■•• : '.■• j; : : ;'•''■. ' : 




V' V 










^ 

^ 



^ 






o 













' . . « <G 



->- 



4, O 



U- 



O 



^ V 






*°v v 



^ V ,.«•• 



<-. 



6^ *o 



<. ■•-'XT*' 6** V 

' " • . <*> o^ • l 



>°^ 



**V 




























°o 





















,0 






(V •"■'*■» O 






O 









„ * ~ J 






<"> ' . . • ,0 







































s0 









I * * °« 









4.4 V" ' 






- ' 










\* 



a 



377 




f 



o€>°o oo^aooo r 



°»» °°-i> 



What's the Matter 
with America 






i 



1? ^ 



Gu r 

MRS. BEN B. LIND3EY 

APRIL 15, 1949 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



The Meaning of 

The Progressive Movement 



fl 



and 



The Rise of the New Party 



By 



AMOS PINCHOT 



f TRAPES ( 1 JiilS flcOUNCft. > 



^opo€}^o 00^3000 



000^00 00^000 (jfjj) 



QQ 
% 















^ 



What's the Matter with America 




There is a great deal going on to-day which savors of mystery 
and passes the comprehension of some men's minds. Whether we 
are reactionaries or radicals, whether we stand together on platitudes 
and conventions or unite in the free masonry of facts, we all feel 
that vast forces are at work in America which we do not entirely 
understand, and whose power and direction no one has been able to 
measure with accuracy. 

The American people, said a college president in a memor- 
able baccalaureate address, is forever embarking with all sails 
set — for nowhere. Not long ago an Englishman, H. G. Wells, 
in his notes on America, said that in spite of the impressive 
and apparently resistless energy which he saw everywhere, he could 
find no trace of a national purpose, no evidence that our people were 
trying to make their country different or better than it was. Is 
this true? Are we a purposeless people, a nation of agitators en- 
amored of strife and motion for its own sake? Is our agitation 
and motion merely rotary, or, through the length and breadth of our 
history, has it followed a definite purpose? And, above all, what is 
that purpose, and how are we seeking its accomplishment to-day? 

The world stands aside for those who know where they are 
going. At this time of great national change and pressure, it 
behooves every thoughtful American to ascertain for himself the 
meaning of the events which are happening around him. 

"Mr. President," said a young American in his speech to the 
Virginia Convention in 1775, "I have but one lamp by which my feet 
are guided ; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way 
to judge the future but by the past." 

But, unfortunately, the study of our past through books of 
American history rarely gives us more than a vague hint at the un- 
derlying causes of events, and altogether fails either to explain the 
present or throw light forward along the pathway of the future. 

Unfortunately, American histories have generally been written 
in the oak panelled libraries of more or less fossilized gentlemen, who 
are far removed from the stark realities of existence, and have little 
contact or sympathy with the problems, thoughts and impulses which 
have aroused our majorities to action, and have made or unmade 
nations. 

Belonging to what we call our privileged class, and happy in 
a position of comfortable immunity from that struggle for the 

(1) 



crude necessities of life, which is the lot of the average American 
man or woman, most of our historians describe American events 
with minds as free from appreciation of underlying causes as the 
mind of a child at a pantomime is free from knowledge of what 
goes on behind the scenes. To them, history apparently narrows it- 
self down to the story of the acts of a few great patriots of good 
appearance and admirable morals, and to the description of a num- 
ber of hackneyed tax laws and stock battles. And here and there, 
to make the pages pleasing to the young and romantic, as well as 
to point a moral, is brought in the wreck of some great traitor, who, 
Lucifer-like, falls from his position of respectable opulence and 
power into the outer darkness of poverty and disgrace. Rarely 
do our historians feel or write in terms of the people's thought. Not 
often do they cease to deal with symptoms and effects and get down 
to root and cause. 

Nevertheless, in spite of historians and pedagogues, I believe 
that through the maze and tangle of our national life, a wide, straight 
vista may be hewn, stretching through the past into the present, and 
flinging out into the sunlight of the future the promise of a great 
unresting national purpose. 

In this pamphlet I have tried to show what has been the trouble 
in America during the vital periods of our history, and what, I be- 
lieve, is the trouble to-day. It may also help to explain the meaning 
of the Progressive Movement and the rise of the new party. 

Amos Pinchot, 
Oct. 1, 1912. 



(2) 



PART ONE 

THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT 
IN EUROPE 

The first period of American history is the story of a conflict 
of ideas in the old world which brought the colonists across the sea 
to the new. 

America had three mothers. From England, France and the 
Netherlands came the men and ideas that made our nation. The his- 
tory of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, France 
and the Netherlands is the first chapter of the story of the de- 
velopment of America's national purpose. As a vivid succession of 
national adventures, the story of this time has no rival in literature. 

Whatever the causes may have been, the huge sodden cloud 
that covered Europe through the middle ages, at this time 
rolled away. The human spirit, liberated from the bondage of 
long, dark centuries arose from its sleep. Men looked around 
them and took stock of the world they lived in. The habit of in- 
dependent thinking, which is merely another name for the spirit of 
democracy, was revived. And an irresistible wave of progressive 
thought surged and thundered over Europe. From out of a world 
recently covered with the dry rot of mental inertia, there gushed a 
river of spiritual regeneration and revolt against economic oppres- 
sion, carrying away on its restless current the wrecks and jetsam 
of dead feudal and monarchical centuries. Then the age of miracles 
was at hand, and everything happened at once. The revolution was 
on, and Europe knew no rest while the new spirit of democracy, 
heedless of border, breed and birth, burst upon the world, pro- 
claiming the doctrine of equality of opportunity for human beings. 

But most of all, the revolution gained power and expression in 
England, France and the Netherlands, the countries in which were 
being shaped the ideas and standards that the colonists brought with 
them to America. In the lands of our three mothers, as if touched 
by the warmth of a long hidden sun, there sprang forth an army 
of great progressive thinkers, soldiers and statesmen. Geniuses 
poured forth the thought of the new era in a stream of passionate 
and beautiful expression. Side by side, kings and commoners, 
churchmen and beggars swelled the chorus of the new democracy, 
and hurled defiance at the old order as they swung onward toward the 
new. Poets, scientists, dramatists, philosophers and artists suddenly 
appeared; men of action, inspired interpreters of life and preachers 

(3) 



of long forgotten spiritual truths took the center of the stage in the 
great new drama of progress. "There is nothing real or useful," 
said Emerson, "that is not a seat of war." The period that pre- 
ceded and lasted through the colonization of America was a time of 
inestimable value to the human race, and therefore one of un- 
exampled struggle and warfare. It was the conception in the old 
world of the nation that was soon to be born in the new. 

The first symptom of this progressive movement in Europe was 
the quickening of the spirit of inquiry. At the beginning of the 
sixteenth century, Sebastian Cabot charted the boundaries of the 
new world, and Copernicus wrote his digest of astronomy that for 
the first time established the real arrangement of the planetary sys- 
tem. Both Catholics and non-conformists in France, Switzerland, 
Germany and the Netherlands were revolting against the narrow and 
absolutely unchristian kind of religion that the middle ages had 
saddled upon them, and were beginning to preach a more real Chris- 
tianity. Lefevre, Farel, Berquin, Briconnet, the Bishop of Meaux 
and Martin Luther, were all seeking the same regeneration of the 
world by a return to those elementary truths taught by "their Divine 
Master." Strong in his faith in the power of simple Christianity, 
"God will renew the world," said Lefevre to his pupil Farel, "and 
you will see it." Through his doctrine of the fraternity and spiritual 
equality of all men John Calvin was encouraging the down-trodden 
people of Europe to regain the self-respect and mental self-confidence 
which feudal government and feudal religion had crushed out of 
them. 

Cervantes fanned the flame of progressive thought by writing 
his great "book of humanity," Don Quixote, which, more power- 
fully than any book written before or since, analyzed feudal 
conditions of life and suspended before the clear lens of exquisite 
satire the absurdity and injustice of obsolete institutions. Rabelais, 
of the master mind, attacked the same time-worn injustices with the 
heavy bludgeon of his gross wit, stark common sense and dauntless 
courage. John Knox, the French poet and philosopher Marot, and 
a host of others were stirring up thought both in England and France. 
Drake circumnavigated the world. While in art, the spirit of 
advance was expressing itself through the work of such men as Ben- 
venuto Cellini, Albrecht Durer, Hans Holbein, Andrea del Sarto, 
Raphael, Veronese, Titian and Leonardi da Vinci. But most radical 
and revolutionary of all, printing was becoming commercially profit- 
able, and in 1539 Grafton brought out a translation of the Bible in 
an edition of 2,500 copies. 

Then came the great Elizabethan period — the golden age of un- 
afraid thought. The young poet Spenser, gave his message of hope 
and inspiration to the people of England. Shakespeare, beginning 
his dramatic career holding a horse in the wings of a London theatre, 
portrayed human character as has no other man that the world has 
seen, and threw over Europe the stimulation of his intense, passion- 
ate, widesweeping thought. Bacon, the great realist in an age of 

(4) 



realism, hurled the disturbing energy of his powerful mind into the 
fields of science, economics and statesmanship. Milton the poet, 
Bunyan the teacher, Dryden, Bossuet, Fenelon, Pascal, Corneille, 
Sir Edward Coke the jurist, Racine, de la Rochefoucault the moral- 
ist, Sir Christopher Wren, Cardinal Mazarin, Sir Henry Vane, and 
a host of great personalities crowded the stage and surcharged an 
atmosphere already vibrant with progressive potentialities. Mean- 
while Galileo, inventor of the compass, the clock and the telescope 
and the discoverer of the shape of planets and of the mountains on 
the moon, was branding himself as an infidel by publishing the results 
of his experiments. And to make matters more disturbing in this 
disturbing age, Harvey came forward with his discovery of the cir- 
culation of the blood. Descartes accomplished in metaphysics what 
Bacon accomplished in natural science. John Locke, the friend of 
religious and civil liberty, wrote his essay on the human understand- 
ing b Van Dyke, Murillo, Rembrandt, Franz Hals and Velasquez 
wrought in Spain and Holland. The English gentlemen pirates 
conquered the seas, set new standards of adventurous commerce, and 
broadened men's conception of the world by the account of their 
voyages, and the fighting admirals of the Netherlands strengthened 
men's hearts with the proof that steadfast courage was unconquer- 
able even by superior force. 

Radical thinking is merely thinking about things as they are- 
plunging deeply into realities and causes instead of skimming the 
surface. All straight thinking is radical. All helpful action is the 
result of radical thought. True education is radical, for it teaches 
facts. The printing press was radical because it scattered informa- 
tion and encouraged thought, and the doctrines of Christianity and 
Judaism most radical of all, because they invited the world's atten- 
tion to the simple, underlying truths upon which all society is 
founded. Radicalism is neither a fad nor an eccentric habit, but a 
simple duty. To think radically is incumbent upon all civilized 
human beings, unless we admit either that the problems of this 
world can be solved without taking account of underlying causes or 
that they cannot be solved at all. 

In the three countries which furnished not only our colonists, 
but the ideals and principles of justice upon which our new nation was 
founded, the new, irrepressible spirit of radical thought took issue 
with the forces of privilege, and plunged Europe into a maelstrom 
of civil war and dissension. The real causes of the trouble were not 
everywhere clear. In histories we find the internal wars of this 
time described as either political or religious. Some of them no 
doubt were political or religious, but in the vast majority of cases we 
find underneath politics and religion an economic cause. We find 
that the real question at stake was whether the people should re- 
main mere tools in a system of exploitation carried on for the benefit 
of the privileged class surrounding the crown, or rise to the dignity 
of being an end in themselves. 

The Parliamentary leader Burke informs us that the struggle 

(5) 



for Anglo-Saxon liberty has always been fought upon the battlefield 
of taxation. Certainly the history of England from the reign of 
Elizabeth until the monarchy was replaced by Cromwell's Parlia- 
ment, is one long struggle between the people and their kings over 
the question whether Parliament or the Crown should have the 
power to tax. 

IN ENGLAND 

In Elizabeth's reign the English made the first strong pro- 
test against the Crown exercising its ancient power of taxing 
the people by giving away commercial monopolies to members of 
the privileged class. Elizabeth yielded where James or Charles 
would have held on, and the democratic revolution was postponed 
half a century. The reign of James the First was a constant bicker 
between the people represented by Parliament and the privileged 
class represented by the Crown, over the question of the right of 
taxation. In a speech to Parliament in 1621, the King announced 
that the power of the people to interfere in public affairs was solely 
derived from the "grace and permission" of himself and his an- 
cestors, and he advised Parliament not to meddle at all with "the 
main points of government." 

A characterization of James in the Edinborough Review 
reminds one of a distinguished stand-pat leader of the present 
day. "He neither gave way gracefully to the advancing spirit 
of liberty, nor took vigorous measures to stop it, but retreated 
before it with ludicrous haste, blustering and insulting as he re- 
treated." James was as deaf to the progressive movement in 
England as Elizabeth was awake to it, but because he was but a 
weak and ineffective enemy of progress, the people bore with him 
for twenty-two years. At his death he was succeeded by another 
stand-pat Stuart — Charles the First. "The main principle of his 
government," says the writer referred to above, "was resistance to 
public opinion; and hence his concessions were delayed till it mat- 
tered not whether he resisted or yielded, till the nation, which had 
long ceased to love or trust him, had at last ceased also to fear him." 

In the reign of Charles the First, the struggle between the priv- 
ileged class and the people of England became acute, with the ques- 
tion of the King's power to exploit the people as the bone of conten- 
tion. But it was the introduction of the court into the situation that 
resulted in the tragic winding up of the partnership that existed 
between the Crown and the aristocracy, for the purpose of exploiting 
the man in the street and on the farm. 

Like all Stuart kings, Charles the First was continually in 
financial difficulties. He decided therefore, solely upon the naked 
exercise of royal prerogative, to levy a real estate tax to be 
applied to the Royal Navy. This was called the Tonnage and 
Poundage tax, and on the country place of Cromwell's kinsman, John 
Hampden, it was assessed at twenty shillings. Hampden refused to 

(6) 



pay it on the ground that the King had no right to tax the people. 
The case was argued in the Exchequer Chamber and the bench 
handed in a divided opinion. Hampden, with the obstinacy of an 
outraged Englishman, decided to leave the country rather than pay 
the twenty shillings, and he and Cromwell were actually on board 
ship on the way to Connecticut when an order of the court prevented 
the ship from sailing.* 

CROMWELL'S BID FOR DEMOCRACY 

During all this time when the struggle between Parliament and 
the Crown was taking place in England, the people were as poor as 
the privileged class was rich. Ground down by taxes and tariffs 
and despised by the church and the privileged class alike, the average 
man, woman or child was considered a mere economic unit of a 
•'sub-human herd." Property was exalted until it occupied a posi- 
tion of almost religious veneration, and the people, the nation's 
"spittle and filth," as they were called, were looked upon as unde- 
sirable but necessary tools in the great system of economic exploita- 
tion. The law, the courts, the church, the executive and the whole 
privileged class — all had the same inhuman attitude toward the 
weaker members of society. Children were hanged or mutilated for 
slight offenses against the sacred rights of property. Men who 
dared to bring law suits against powerful persons were arrested on 
bench warrants and thrown into prison. The courts issued no sub- 
poenas, and witnesses were obtained only at the expense and in- 
stance of private parties. The church preached the doctrine of 
entire submission to vested wrongs, and the executive imposed its 
will upon the common man through the absolute control of legisla- 
tion. Conditions of labor were terrible and without redress. When, 
after the great plague, there was a scarcity of labor, and wages went 
up, a law was enacted that men who refused to work for the same 
wages as before the plague should be branded upon the forehead. 
Labor unions were discouraged and workmen who organized for 
protection against capital were either fined, pilloried or mutilated. 

Cromwell's wars, though nominally religious, were in reality 
the struggle of the English people for political power. But men do 
not fight for power unless they have some special use for it. The 

*Foot Note. There is no case in the history of England which so closely 
resembles the Dred Scott case, decided by our own Supreme Court. If the 
English Courts had decided in favor of the people and against the vested 
rights of privilege they would have saved England from a bloody civil war. 
But England's court held in the Hampden case, just as our court held in 
the Dred Scott decision, that privilege was superior to the legislative rep- 
resentatives of the people, and in both cases a huge national catastrophe re- 
sulted. Certainly if Cromwell had left England with Hampden, and if the 
right of the Parliamentary government to tax had been vindicated by a favor- 
able decision in the Hampden case, it is probable that the Covenanters and 
Round Heads would never have thrown England into the whirlpool of civil 
strife, and that Charles the First would not have been caught in the net in 
which his own stand-pat stupidity entangled him and finally carried him 
to the block. 

(7) 



people of England in Cromwell's time wanted power for the same 
purpose that the people of America want it to-day — to distribute 
wealth more equally, to modify the grinding poverty in which they 
live, and to enable them to enjoy the fruit of their labor without 
dividing it with the privileged class. The key-note of Cromwell's 
career and of his success was his great love for the people and his 
burning desire to see them happy and prosperous. 

When, on August 30th, 1658, Cromwell was fighting his last 
battle with his only conqueror, death, the two characteristics of his 
strong, obstinate soul stood out — his fear of God and his love of the 
people. "It is a fearful thing," he cried, "to fall into the hands of 
the living God," and then "Lord, though I am a miserable and 
wretched creature, I am in covenant with Thee through grace. 
And I may, I will, come to Thee, for Thy people. Thou hast made 
me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some 
good, and Thee service; and many of them have set too high a 
value upon me, though others wish and would be glad at my death. 
Lord, however Thou dost dispose of me, continue and go on to do 
good to them. * * * * Pardon such as desire to trample upon the 
dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people, too. And pardon 
the folly of this short prayer: even for Jesus Christ's sake. And 
give us a good night if it be Thy pleasure. Amen." 

IN FRANCE 

In France, meanwhile, the same questions were being fought 
out practically along the same lines. The Edict of Nantes in 1681 
gave religious liberties to all people irrespective of creed. And then, 
with peace restored, Henry of Navarre, France's first democratic 
king, broke all kingly precedents and began a constructive campaign 
to improve the economic condition of France. He reorganized her 
finance and her system of agriculture. He built up the silk in- 
dustry, encouraged the arts, extended commerce, constructed good 
roads, bridges and canals, and promoted colonization in Canada. 

The reign of Louis the Fourteenth, the so-called Great Monarch, 
is the story of the up-building, by a man of enormous executive 
capacity, of two hostile forces. On the one hand, Louis con- 
structed a centralized government based upon the proposition that 
the people could not govern themselves. All branches of govern- 
ment, centralized in one supreme agency, the Crown, were devoted 
to the aggrandizement and enrichment of the nobility at the expense 
of the people. On the other hand he encouraged literature, science, 
the arts. In short, while he piled up an imposing top-heavy, tyran- 
nical structure of undemocracy, he also unconsciously set to work 
those revolutionary mental processes which in the long run must 
inevitably undermine and destroy it. Louis the Fourteenth was one 
of those unfortunate men who did not allow his right hand to know 
what his left hand was doing. To build up a system of industrial 
exploitation, and at the same time encourage independent thinking 

(8) 



was an error of judgment so obvious that even the King ought to 
have known better. 

As France grew apparently mightier and cut a broader swath in 
the history of Europe, her people were growing poorer through 
exploitation by the privileged class. The order of France's 
nobility was exempt from taxation although their estates were 
often enormous. The average man had no standing in the 
courts. In proportion to the almost unbelievable luxury with 
which the privileged class surrounded themselves, the people 
were ground down by feudal customs and laws. They, too, like 
the common people of England, were considered a "sub-human 
herd," created especially for the profit and happiness of their su- 
periors. By the corvee, the peasants were obliged to work without 
pay upon the great public buildings and on the network of fine mili- 
tary roads. The construction of the palace at Versailles cost thous- 
ands of lives. Underfed, overworked and living in unsanitary con- 
ditions, the peasants perished like flies, while the most perfectly 
equipped home of special privilege that the world has seen was com- 
pleted for the pleasure of the King and his friends. Forced, unpaid 
labor was also required from the people in carrying military stores 
and baggage, and a multitude of feudal services were performed 
by them gratis for the privileged class everywhere. Even during 
the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, Turgot, a progressive Controller 
General of Finance, abolished twenty-three kinds of taxes which 
the people were obliged to pay on their own labor, on contracts, or 
on wages or compensation which they received as the result of their 
toil. 

It was in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, after the spirit of 
liberty had been aroused by the Fronde revolution, in which the 
people, represented by Parliament, sought to assume powers hitherto 
held only by the Crown, after their spirit of liberty had been fur- 
ther stimulated by the horrible massacre and persecutions following 
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and when the centralized 
government of Louis the Fourteenth was undermining itself by 
oppression of the people on the one hand and by encouraging thought 
on the other, that the French Hugenots made a break for liberty, ran 
the gauntlet of Louis' dragonades and came to the American colonies. 

THE PROGRESSIVE SPIRIT IN THE 
NETHERLANDS 

But in this astonishing age, when the old world was awakening 
from its slumbers, the vital spirit of democracy and the yearnings 
of the people to achieve a more just civilization sprang into being 
in all places at once. While the fight for democracy was being 
carried on in England and France, from the reign of Elizabeth to 
Charles the Second, and from Francis the First to Louis the Four- 
teenth, the people of the Netherlands were neither idle nor silent. 

(9) 



From the time of Charles the Fifth, Spain's rich Netherland 
possessions had interfered somewhat with her trade in the East. 
They yielded insufficient revenue and they were unorthodox. The 
Spanish King, Charles the Fifth, had allowed his armies to sack 
Rome and imprison the Pope, and was entirely willing to tolerate 
unorthodoxy in other countries. But being in need of money, he be- 
came exceedingly devout and established in the Netherlands a thor- 
oughgoing system of religious persecution. 

Charles's son, Philip the Second, who was a more sincere re- 
ligious bigot than his father, made a better case for his conscience 
but no worse a one for his pocket. When he came to the throne 
he continued and extended the inquisition, sent for Fernando Al- 
vares de Toledo, Duke of Alva, and put him in charge of the work 
of saving the souls and appropriating the property of the Nether- 
landers. Alva, though at this time sixty years old, was probably the 
best man in Europe for the purpose. He was a refined, intellectual, 
but coldly ferocious military genius, with a quiet smile that made 
even his friends shiver. An English historian describes him as 
"perhaps the most bloodthirsty man who ever existed in what is 
called the civilized world." Motley speaks of him as the most 
effective general of his time. It was this man that advised Philip 
that, if the Netherlands were properly administered, "a stream of 
gold a yard deep" would flow from them to the Spanish treasury. 
Alva came to the Netherlands with an army which was a joy for 
military men to look upon, and for twelve years the Netherlands 
were deluged with blood. 

EXPLOITATION OF THE PEOPLE 

As a matter of course, confiscation of property accompanied 
the punishment of almost every grade of religious or political offence, 
and a system of extortionate and practically impossible taxation 
was imposed. The Tenth Penny (a ten percent tax) was placed 
on every article sold, and enormous personal and real property taxes 
were also saddled on the unfortunate people. Under Alva's ad- 
ministration the bloody stream of gold a yard deep was soon set in 
motion. 

In spite of the war and the inquisition, the Netherland people 
desired to remain under the rule of Spain, and, even to William of 
Orange, the idea of separation was abhorrent. The revolution was 
forced upon them, and even as they died in battle or at the stake 
they continued to pray for the welfare of their Sovereign, and to 
ask God to turn his heart toward wisdom. Like most great wars, 
this struggle between Spain and the Netherlands was not political. 
It was not a revolution against political power, but against political 
power used for oppression and exploitation. 

Spain was at this time Europe's most powerful country ; she 
was an Empire rather than a nation. Nevertheless, upheld by the 
wonderful personality of William of Orange, with his dreams of a 

(10) 



seemingly impossible deliverance, with his idealism and his marvel- 
ous genius of accomplishment, the unconquerable Netherland people 
kept up the unequal fight. No struggle can be found in history, not 
even our own Civil War, that presents a record of such heroic, 
stubborn fighting. It was a war, wrote Alva himself to Phillip, such 
as never before was seen or heard of on land or sea. 

Of the siege of Harlam, which lasted from December, 1572, to 
July, 1573, Alva wrote: "Never was a place defended with such 
skill and bravery either by rebels or by men fighting for their lawful 
Prince." When the besieged Netherlander, reduced by starvation 
and disease and worn by sleepless fighting to a pitiful handful, had 
eaten everything in the city with the exception of a few loaves of 
bread that had been saved for the last extremity, these unconquerable 
men and women performed what I believe is one of the most un- 
consciously dramatic acts that has ever been recorded in military 
history. The Spaniards realizing that the people of Harlam must 
yield at once or die on the walls from lack of food, offered terms 
of surrender. The men of Harlam replied by hurling in the Span- 
iards' faces the last remaining loaves of bread that were in the city. 
Harlam fell, and like every town that fell, Alva's soldiers were en- 
couraged to sack it with horrible barbarity. 

In 1572, was the defense and destruction of Mons. Then came 
the capitulation of Mechlin, and the first siege of Leyden, that 
lasted from October 31, 1573, to March 21, 1574. But during the 
last siege of Leyden, from March 26, to October 3, 1574, when the 
fortunes of William and his people were at their lowest ebb, when 
the grip of Spain upon the throat of the Netherlands seemed im- 
possible to shake off, this people showed the real stuff of which it 
was made. Quietly the burghers and their leader sat down to dis- 
cuss the desperate situation. If Leyden should fall their cause was 
lost. The Inquisition, the Tenth Penny, and Spain's whole terrible 
system of exploitation would be fastened upon them. Neither 
political, nor religious, nor industrial liberty would ever be regained. 

With the steadfast simple patriotism of a great people, 
led by a great pure-spirited man, they decided that the only 
way to rid their nation of its oppressors was to sacrifice 
their country by opening the dikes and letting in the sea, 
which they and their fathers had labored so patiently through 
centuries to push back. This they did, deliberately and with knowl- 
edge of the tremendous material disaster which it entailed. At 
Rotterdam, Schydam and Delfts Haven the dikes were opened and 
the ocean swept through, over the fertile lands cultivated by their 
long toil. In through the breeches in the dikes, over the canals — 
sailed the great Dutch ships to the relief of the beleaguered cities, 
the Dutch fleet commanded by those staunch, quiet men that were 
still to make even the great English admirals fear the stubborn 
power and moral strength of this unconquerable race. This was the 
crisis of the war, and an absolute proof to Spain that neither the 
spiritual domination nor the economic exploitation of the Netherland 
people could be accomplished by human agency. 

(11) 



THE RECALL IN HOLLAND 

The last chapter of the war against privilege in which William 
of Orange led the Dutch people, is the most remarkable of all. It 
is the writing of the Declaration of Independence of the United 
States of Holland, the publication of which scandalized Europe and 
set a new standard of democracy, on the 26th of July, 1581. In it, 
the people of Holland conceded the divine right of Kings to rule them, 
and denied only that there existed a divine right to misrule them. 
But the startling blasphemy of Holland's Declaration of Independ- 
ence, which earned William and his people the reputation of being 
wild cat radicals, was contained in the following words : "All man- 
kind knows," says the Declaration, "that a prince is appointed by 
God to cherish his subjects, even as a shepherd to guard his sheep. 
When, therefore, the prince does not fulfill his duty as a protector; 
when he oppresses his subjects, destroys their ancient liberties, and 
treats them as slaves, he is to be considered not a prince, but a 
tyrant. As such, the estates of the land may lawfully and reasonably 
depose him, and elect another in his room." Thus in the very foun- 
dation of the Dutch democracy, a democracy with a record for 
stability and sanity which is equaled by that of no other country in 
the world, William the Silent, and the strong, far-seeing men about 
him sought to embed the principle of the recall of unfaithful public 
servants, extending even to the divinely selected occupants of the 
throne itself. 

THE SPIRIT OF LIBERTY CARRIED TO THE 
NEW WORLD 

And so it was that three centuries ago the people of our three 
mothers, England, Holland and France, wrote in their blood and 
sweat their hopes of liberty, and their dreams of a better, juster 
world. In an era still clouded by the dark mists of the middle ages, 
at a time when liberty, when the right of men and women to keep 
unshared with privilege the fruit of their own toil, was but "a shade 
of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes," our forefathers in 
our three mother lands fought the great battle of progress against 
custom, precedent and against the overwhelming odds of entrenched 
arrogant power. With such traditions, with the inspiration of such 
heroic dramas quick in their minds, with flesh and spirit quivering 
from the lash of oppression, with the meaning and value of justice 
burned into their minds and souls, and with the surge and thunder 
of the progressive movement of Europe ringing in their ears, they 
came to the new world to make living realities of the great purpose 
that Europe had taught them. All events, revolutions, wars, the 
building of empires and their fall, are begun in men's thoughts. 
The Progressive movement in Europe during the time of our colon- 
ization furnished the thoughts which later bore fruit in the founding 
of the American nation. 

(12) 



PART TWO 

THE WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 

The second chapter of American history contains the story of 
our war with England. And now for the first time we find a clear 
line drawn between the people and privilege — between the men who 
believe in industrial liberty and the men who believe in industrial 
slavery. In the Revolutionary War we find the full development 
of America's national purpose. 

Loria, the Italian economist, says that out of 286 wars studied, 
258 were due to economic causes, and that the remaining 28, though 
apparently religious, also had economic influences behind them. Un- 
questionably most of the wars in Europe that we have mentioned 
were caused by industrial injustice to the people. Yet some of them 
were no doubt largely political — some brought on by sheer ambition, 
rage or insanity of kings or their advisers. Without doubt, under a 
centralized government owned and operated by a powerful group, 
nations could be hurled bodily into disaster without the consent of 
the people. In times of benighted religious fanaticism also, when 
it was considered a virtue to kill a man if he disagreed with you, and 
thus deliver his soul into everlasting torture, purely religious wars 
were certainly possible. 

NOT A WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

In the Revolutionary War there is no blurring of the issue, no 
room for doubt as to the motives on each side. Once and for all 
let it be remembered that the Revolutionary War was not a political 
war. Politics can never be raised to the dignity of a great issue. 
Politics has no just claim to be an end in itself. It should be merely 
an instrument — a means to an end. And that end is the welfare 
of men, women and children. Upon the issue of human welfare, 
and upon this issue alone, our war with England was fought. 

As the American colonies became better established and began 
to amount to something commercially, the old world began to take 
account of them once more. On the whole, England governed the 
American colonies well. She gave us a fair amount of home rule. 
We were undoubtedly the best governed and least governed colonies 
of the time ; we were infinitely better off than the colonies of France 
or Spain. Moreover, the American people were entirely loyal to 
England. American public documents of those days show a deep re- 
spect for England's monarchical system of government and the 

(13) 



warmest personal affection for King George. And above all, Ameri- 
cans had a positive loathing for the idea of political independence. 

At the close of 1774, Washington stated that anyone "who could 
believe that the people of Massachusetts were setting up for inde- 
pendence and what not, had been grossly abused." Even after the 
battle of Bunker Hill, when he had taken command of the Colonial 
army, and up to the Declaration of Independence itself, he abso- 
lutely refused to admit any desire on the part of the American people 
for independence. In March, 1775, Franklin said: "No American, 
drunk or sober, thought of independence." In April, 1775, Jefferson 
said : "I never heard a whisper of a disposition to separate from the 
mother country." In July, 1775, Jefferson wrote: "We have not 
raised armies with designs of separating from Great Britain and 
establishing independent states. Necessity has not driven us into 
that desperate measure." Thomas Payne alone, of all the conspicu- 
ous patriots, declared himself in favor of separation. In October, 
1775, he wrote: "When I reflect upon the use she (England) hath 
made of the discovery of the new world * * * I hesitate not 
for a moment to believe that the Almighty will finally separate 
America from Britain. Call it independence or what you will, it is 
the cause of God and humanity ; it will go on." 

What then was the cause of the Revolutionary War? The 
answer is as old as the world. It has been written in the histories 
of nations long before Pharoah asked the people of Israel to make 
bricks without straw. It is the irreconcilable conflict between two 
conceptions of the meaning and purpose of human life. "It is the 
eternal struggle," says Abraham Lincoln, "between these two prin- 
ciples — Right and Wrong — throughout the world. They are the 
two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of 
time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common 
right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is 
the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the 
same spirit that says: 'You toil and work and earn bread and I'll 
eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth 
of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and 
live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an 
apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical prin- 
ciple." 

PRIVILEGE AND INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY 
THE CAUSE 

For centuries England's government had been under the in- 
fluence of a selfish privileged class, headed by the Crown. As far 
back as the time of England's typical reactionary, Charles the First, 
up to the time of her still more typical reactionary, George the Third, 
the chief question that had engrossed this class in England was how 
to get money out of the people through taxes, assessments, tariffs, 
government monopolies, etc. 

(14) 



If the reader has time to look up the Twelfth Statute 
of Charles's reign, he will find England's commercialism ex- 
pressed in a huge tariff act which would make Mr. Payne, 
Mr. Aldrich or Mr. Taft pale with envy. Its schedules cover twenty 
immense folio sheets, including its "Schedule K," a prohibitive 
duty on manufactured wool. It goes into the minutest details and 
draws distinctions between nails and pins of various sizes, and dolls' 
heads of different materials. But for practical purposes and in or- 
der to gain a fair idea of England's policy toward America, we need 
not go back farther than the Navigation Act of 1660, for it was from 
this time on that the system of enriching England's privileged in- 
dustrial classes at the expense of the American people developed 
most rapidly. This Act reads in part as follows: "After the first 
day of December, 1660, * * * no goods or commodities what- 
soever shall be imported into or exported out of * * * ter- 
ritories to his majesty belonging * * * in any other ship or 
ships, vessel or vessels whatsoever, but in such ships or vessels 
as do truly and without fraud belong only to the people of England 
* * * and whereof the master and three-fourths of the marin- 
ers at least are English, under penalty of the forfeiture and loss of 
all the goods and commodities." 

FREIGHT RATES AND TARIFF 

Here we have an English transportation monopoly fastened 
upon the American colonies as effectively as our railroad lines fas- 
tened their monopolies upon the people of the United States before 
rate regulation interfered. The Navigation Act of 1660 also took 
from the colonists the right to sell their products in the best market, 
for it provided that no sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, etc., should be 
exported from America to any territory not belonging to England. 
Laws were also passed placing heavy import duties upon necessaries 
of life imported into the colonies from any country but England. 
And in order to enforce such laws and prevent smuggling, an Act was 
passed in 1663 prohibiting ships carrying goods to America from 
stopping anywhere on the way. In 1672 what was called the Third 
Navigation Act was passed for the purpose of still more surely clinch- 
ing England's monopoly over trade from America, by requiring that 
colonial exporters of tobacco, sugar, cotton, etc., should give a bond 
that these articles would be shipped to England and no other place. 
In 1696 came the Fourth Navigation Act, which practically re- 
enacted previous regulations. 

Skipping to 1733, we find the famous Molasses Act, passed to 
protect the British sugar islands from competition with the Ameri- 
can colonies and with the French West Indies. It struck a heavy 
blow to the manufacturer of rum in the colonies by placing a high 
duty on the importation of sugar or molasses. 

In 1764 came the so-called Sugar Act designed to raise revenue 
for the defense of the colonies from French invasion. Though its 

(15) 



purpose may have been justifiable, its effect was unfortunate. It 
placed a duty upon all sugars coming into the colonies, except from 
English possessions, of one pound, and two shillings, over and above 
the duties already imposed. On coffee, not imported from England, 
entering an American port, the same law levied a duty of $15 a ton- 
It fixed likewise, heavy import duties on silks, cloths manufactured in 
China, East India, etc., and on calicoes printed or stained in Persia, 
China, or East India, sixty cents a piece. The legislators of England 
were nothing if not thorough, and they proved their skill in the popu- 
lar pursuit of exploiting the American colonies by including in the 
law of 1764 a long list of duties which the colonists had to pay in ex- 
porting their products to any country but England. This Act again 
provided heavy penalties for the American producers who failed to 
ship their articles "direct" into the British Empire. 

At this point we have a situation where Americans were prac- 
tically prohibited from buying what they needed in the cheapest 
market or selling what they produced to the highest bidder — where 
they were obliged to pay enormous import duties on their food and 
clothing, on the necessaries of life and of industry, and where 
transportation was in the hands of English monopolies and the 
colonists were obliged to pay whatever freight rates English com- 
panies demanded on everything that entered or left an American 
port. 

Public opinion and the enormous amount of smuggling which 
resulted from the shameful exploitation of all Americans who were 
not in some kind of financial partnership with English transporta- 
tion or manufacturing concerns, resulted in the repeal of the Act of 
1764. And the English system of privilege fell back on the pre- 
vious somewhat less predatory laws. But the indignation of our 
people did not subside, and, if it had, it would have been fanned into 
a white heat again when the Revenue Act of 1767 permitted excise 
officers to enter citizens' houses in search of smuggled goods, and 
"break open doors, chests, trunks and other packages" and confiscate 
the same. The Stamp Act of 1765, which history has made so much 
of, was passed as a retaliation against the colonists for resisting 
the demand that they should give to the English manufacturing and 
transporting companies a large percentage of the fruit of their labor. 
It was a measure which would have been impossible unless the 
privileged class of England, headed by a reactionary and ignorant 
King, had been in complete control of the government. It placed a 
tax upon almost every kind of printed matter in the colonies. On 
leases, deeds, wills, contracts, bonds, judgments, and even on news- 
papers and calendars. But it capped the climax with a two percent 
tax on "any sum not exceeding fifty pounds sterling money, which 
shall be given * * * in relation to any clerk or apprentice, 
which shall be put or placed with any master or mistress to learn a 
profession, trade or employment." And on sums over fifty pounds, 
it increased the rate to five percent. 



(16) 



AMERICAN COMPETITION KILLED 

The Navigation Acts, Revenue Acts, Tariff Acts and Stamp 
Act were a terrible burden on the people of the colonies. But in 
the meantime England had gone still further in her policy of indus- 
trial slavery — this time along a line of still more direct and open 
exploitation. In 1750 Parliament, in whose deliberations England's 
big business played so strong a part, rushed to the defense of the 
captains of her steel industry. By the Act of 1750 England for- 
bade Americans to erect "any mill or other engine for slitting or 
rolling iron; or any plating forge to work with a tilt hammer, or 
any furnace for making steel in said Colonies." Meanwhile, in order 
to protect the hat manufacturers in London, hat making in America 
was prohibited by an affirmative act of Parliament, while the anx- 
iety of England's great millers in Manchester was similarly assuaged 
by laws prohibiting American manufacture of cotton goods. 

At this time England's greatest corporation, the East India Com- 
pany was on the verge of bankruptcy, although its storehouses con- 
tained tea and other East Indian goods valued at $20,000,000. 
America was using an enormous amount of tea which, on account 
of the high import duty, was chiefly smuggled from Holland and 
France. At the suggestion of the East India Company's directors, 
the English government not only abolished the national tax which 
the East India Company was paying to the Exchequer, but, in order 
to prevent smuggling and provide a market for the Company in 
America, it cut down the import duty on East India Company tea 
entering American ports. If the people of America had been willing 
to help out the English government in its project of putting this 
to help out the English government in its project of putting this great 
corporation on its feet, they would soon, as Trevalyan says, "have 
drunk the East India Company out of its difficulties." But they were 
so exasperated at England's commercial policy toward them that they 
preferred to smuggle tea at a loss rather than play into England's 
hands. When the first shipload arrived in Boston harbor, a party 
of Boston's prominent citizens, dressed and painted as Indians, 
boarded the ship and threw about $80,000 worth of tea into the bay. 

ENGLAND'S LAWS AND LAWYERS 

Law in the past has generally been the expression of the will 
of the privileged class. It is generally so to-day. The industrial 
laws with which England saddled the colonies were certainly so. 
Laws to prevent the colonies from selling their produce in the best 
markets; laws to prevent them from buying the necessaries of life 
from the cheapest markets ; laws forbidding them to make anything 
or do anything that interfered with English monopoly; laws en- 
couraging England's greatest corporation, the East India' Company, 
at the expense of the colonial housekeeper; laws encouraging Eng- 
land's big business — steel, cotton and transportation— at the expense 
of the whole American people! In short, laws making it harder 

(17) 



and dearer for the average man of America to live and easier for 
the capitalist in England to make and keep a great fortune ! 

The men in power in England were not statesmen, but lawyers. 
They said it was right to exploit the colonies because England had 
the legal power to do so, and because she was merely following the 
precedent of other civilized nations. In this system of oppression 
of the American people, by a Parliament whose deliberations were 
guided by the will of the selfish privileged class, is found the cause 
of the American Revolution. It was England's attempt to fasten in- 
dustrial slavery on America, and nothing more or less, that stirred 
in our people the spirit of revolt, and lost for England her empire in 
the western world. The fatal reactionary blunder which England 
made in her treatment of the American people is summed up in a 
single sentence of the Prime Minister, Lord Grenville. "Colonies," 
said he, "are only settlements made in distant parts of the world for 
the improvement of trade, and they would be intolerable except 
upon the conditions in the Acts of Navigation." 

THE INSURGENTS 

With that political wisdom and spiritual vision to which, of all 
the English, the Earl of Chatham paid the highest tribute, the col- 
onists saw that equality of opportunity to earn a living must be the 
foundation of new world institutions, if they were to escape 
the social, political and religious injustices which had originally 
driven them from their homes. "Chatham," said Trevalyan, "after 
confiding to the House of Lords that his favorite study had been 
the political literature of the master countries of the world ; declared 
and avowed that the resolutions and addresses put forth by Congress 
at Philadelphia, for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity and wis- 
dom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circum- 
stances, were surpassed by no body of men, of any age and nation, 
who had ever issued a state paper." At the end of a terrific indict- 
ment of England's exploitation of the colonies he voiced in a few 
words America's protest against England's injustice. "We, your 
Majesty's commons of Great Britain, give and grant to your 
Majesty — what? Our property? No! We give and grant to your 
Majesty the property of your Majesty's commons in America. It 
is an absurdity in terms." 

Long before this time James Otis, the most eloquent and fiery 
of all American advocates of industrial freedom, embodied the spirit 
of the American revolution in his "Letter to a Noble Lord." 

"As the colonists are British subjects, and confessedly on all hands en- 
titled to the same privileges, with the subjects born within the realm, I 

challenge Mr. J s, or anyone else, to give even the color of a conclusive 

reason why the colonists are not entitled to the same means and methods 
of obtaining a living with their fellow subjects in the (British) Islands * * * 
Can anyone tell me," he continues, referring to the statute forbidding the 
colonists from erecting mills for fabricating iron or setting up furnaces for 
making steel, "why trade, commerce, arts, sciences, and manufactures should 
not be as free to an American as to an European? Is there anything in the 

(18) 



laws of nature or nations, anything in the nature of our allegiance that for- 
bids a colonist to push the manufacture of iron much beyond the making 
of a horseshoe or hobnail? * * * The Administrator has worked these 
principles up to 'fundamental maxims of policy at this cricis.' The Regulator 
hath followed him, and given broad hints that all kinds of American manu- 
factures will not only be discountenanced, but even prohibited, as fast as 
they are found to interfere with those of Britain. That is, in plain English, 
we shall do nothing they can do for us * * * and what they cannot do 
for us, we are permitted to do for ourselves." And again: "Take my word 
for one my Lord, every inhabitant in America maintains at least two lazy 
fellows in ease, idleness, or luxury in mother Britain's lap. * * * The 
coarsest coat of the meanest American peasant, in reality contributes towards 
every branch of our gracious and ever adored sovereign's revenue. The con- 
sumer pays ultimately the tax, and 'tis confessed on all hands, and is the 
truth, that America, in fact or eventually, consumes one-half the manufactures 
of Britain." 

And of the Stamp Tax, he says : 

"The burden of the Stamp Tax will certainly fall chiefly on the middling, 
more necessitous, and laboring people. The widow, the orphan, and others, 
who have few on earth to help, or even pity them, must pay heavily to 
this tax." 

This is the crux of the whole matter. Townshend, Grenville, 
George III, the manufacturers, transportation companies, and the 
whole privileged class of England believed that our colonies were 
a great farm or estate. This estate they proposed to work for their 
own benefit. And they did so with a will. 

Crimes against the people have generally been committed by 
men who believed that they were in the right. The privileged class 
of England before the Revolution, like the privileged class in 
America to-day, no doubt believed that they were entirely justified. 
At all events they bolstered up their policies and acts with the most 
solemn precedents of law and history, until they brought upon 
themselves, upon England and America, a disaster which cost Eng- 
land more than her commercialism ever gained for her and plunged 
both peoples into war. 

CONDITION IN COLONIES LIKE TO-DAY'S 

The condition of England while her privileged class was sowing 
the wind and reaping the whirlwind of the Revolution, was like that 
of America to-day. 

Macauley, Green, Trevalyan and other frank historians admit 
the utter commercialism and corruption that existed in both 
private and political life. A new element, says Trevalyan, was 
rapidly pushing to the front in Parliament and in society. The 
great manufacturers, the rich West Indian planters and the East 
Indian Nabobs were asserting the claims that new wealth at all times 
makes upon civilization, while the great peers who were barred by 
tradition from active work amassed huge fortunes in their Para- 
dise of privilege — government service. The nobleman of that time 
had much to sell — social and political influence, introductions to the 
powerful, pressure upon the political representatives of big business, 
and tips upon the outcome of cabinet or Parliamentary deliberations. 
If he used his opportunities, and either played the market or invested 

(19) 



shrewdly under the right guidance, he could make the fortune of 
himself and his family with little effort. There was a millenium 
of graft in public life and in business. Historians tell us of men 
in public life who, in a short time, accumulated millions of pounds, 
all of it taken from the public's pocket, in army and navy contracts, 
or commissions or bribes, or all combined. 

As a corollary to the great wealth of the privileged class, 
the people were desperately poor, and totally without in- 
fluence in the government. Ignorance thrived everywhere, and 
reactionary sentiments came from the mouths of the most dis- 
tinguished politicians. The King himself was a man practically 
without education. George the Third used to wonder, says John 
Fiske, in his history of the American Revolution, what people could 
find to admire in such a driveller as Shakespeare. He was too nar- 
row to understand even the problems of his own household. For 
such a man to try to regulate an empire was utterly hopeless. Be- 
sides, he was without idealism and narrowly commercial. In Adam 
Smith's "Wealth of Nations," there is a paragraph which describes 
the policy of George the Third and his ministers in regard to 
America. "To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising 
up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit for 
a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit 
for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose 
government is influenced by shopkeepers." 

EARLY PROGRESSIVES AND STANDPATTERS 

But the English privileged class was not made up entirely of 
reactionaries. And here again the parallel between the days before 
the Revolution and our times holds good. In Parliament, and even 
in the king's cabinet, there were a few great progressive leaders who, 
like the progressive leaders of to-day, championed the cause of 
democracy and industrial liberty in America. Such insurgent spirits 
as Chatham, Burke, Fox, Conway, Shelbourne and Camden, with 
all their power of genius and superb devotion, fought a glorious but 
losing battle against privilege. 

On the 19th of April, 1774, Burke addressed the Speaker of 
the House of Commons, as follows : 

"Permit me, sir, to lead your attention very far back; back to the Act 
of Navigation ; the corner stone of the policy of this country with regard 
to her colonies. Sir, that policy was, from the beginning, purely commercial, 
and the commercial system was wholly restrictive. It was the system of 
a monopoly. No trade was let loose from that restraint, but merely to enable 
the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your trade, you could not 
take ; or to enable them to dispose of such articles as we forced upon them, 
and for which, without some degree of liberty they could not pay. Hence all 
your specific and detailed enumerations ; hence the innumerable checks and 
counterchecks; hence that infinite variety of paper claims by which you bind 
together this complicated system of the colonies. This principle of com- 
mercial monopoly runs through no less than twenty-nine Acts of Parlia- 
ment, from the year 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764." 

(20) 



Camden in support of Pitt's great speech against the Stamp 
Act, said : 'This position is founded on the laws of nature. Nay, 
more, it is itself an eternal law of nature. For whatever is a man's 
own, is absolutely his own, no man has a right to take it from him 
without his consent, either expressed by himself or his represent- 
atives. Whoever attempts it, attempts an injury, whoever does it 
commits a robbery." 

While England's insurgent spirits were fighting America's battle 
in England, our own insurgent patriots, James Otis, Francis and John 
Adams, Payne, Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Franklin, Dickinson, 
and a score of others were leading the cause in the new world, and in- 
deed they had a hard battle to fight. America in the eighteenth cen- 
tury had as large a proportion of standpat Tories as the United States 
has to-day. And these men in newspapers, pamphlets, speeches, 
and in the deliberation of the American local political bodies, 
denounced the progressives in the same spirit and language as our 
most distinguished standpatters are using at the present time. When 
the Continental Congress met in September, 1774, and passed its 
Declaration of Rights, claiming for the American people a "free and 
exclusive right of legislation * * * in all cases of taxation and 
internal polity," American standpatters, thrown into a paroxism of 
fear and apprehension, began an energetic campaign of abuse against 
all those who had taken part in the "crime of Congress." 

This campaign was carried on in newspapers and in speeches, but 
especially in tracts or pamphlets. One of the most conspicuous re- 
actionaries of the time, E. B. Chandler, published a pamphlet called 
"What think Ye of Congress Now?" Writing in a spirit which 
seems familiar to the modern reader, he refers to the progressives as 
"our beer house gentry," "pretended sons of liberty," "sons of faction 
and confusion," etc. On the frontispiece appears the following 
declaration of hope : "It is hoped and expected, that this want of con- 
fidence (shown by the Continental Congress) in the justice and ten- 
derness of the mother country and this open resistance to its author- 
ity can only have found place among the lower and more ignorant of 
the people." It is hard for a reader of the New York Sun, Tribune, or 
Evening Post to realize that this was written a century and a 
quarter ago. 

Another standpat commentary on the progressive party in the 
colonies is as follows: "If the greatest enemies of British America 
had been employed to contrive the ruin of the colonies they could not 
have proposed a more effectual scheme or purpose." And again: 
"For these reasons I abhor the late Congress. Its first appearance 
raised our curiosity but excited no terror, but it was not long before 
it turned out to be a perfect monster — a mad blind monster." 

In 1776, when the colonists came at last to realize that their 
only chance to stop industrial exploitation was independence from 
England, the standpat element became more panicky than ever. A 
typical Tory, writing under the name of Candidus, expresses himself 
as follows : "Volumes were insufficient to describe the horror, misery 

(21) 



and desolation awaiting the people in the Syren form of American 
independence, * * * Independence and Slavery are synono- 
mous." 

But Dr. Myles Cooper, in his "A Friendly Address to All Rea- 
sonable Americans," outdid even our own editorial "opinion 
moulders" in the following burst of eloquence, when he cried : "Oh, 
my infatuated countrymen! My deluded fellow-subjects, and fellow 
Christians ! Open your eyes, I entreat you, awake from your dreams 
and regard your own safety." He then prophesied that under pop- 
ular government even religious liberty would perish, and continued : 
"In a word, no order or denomination of men amongst us would 
enjoy liberty or safety, if subjected to the fiery genius of a New 
England Republican Government ; the little finger of which we should 
soon experience to be heavier than the laws of Parliament. This 
(Parliament) has chastised us with whips when we deserved punish- 
ment, but that would torment us with scorpions whether we de- 
served it or not." 

AMERICA'S PURPOSE UNCHECKED 

But neither the threats and croakings of reactionary politicians 
in America and England, nor the lectures to "flagitious" Americans 
and "traitorous" members of Parliament, which the irascible George 
delivered almost daily from the throne, affected the progress of 
events. Something more compelling than Tory threats and royal 
lectures was at work in the world. Revived by the new crisis, 
nourished by the opposition of men who could not under- 
stand or even see it, the great underlying purpose of American 
civilization had come to the front. The progressive struggle of the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe had developed it. 
The colonists had borne it with them from England, France and the 
Netherlands, and a century of pioneer life had strengthened and 
tempered it into something more obstinate than the world had seen 
before. 

There was no precedent in history for the colonists' revolt 
against so civilized a form of industrial injustice as that which Eng- 
land was visiting upon America. It was not a case of the brutal 
industrial slavery that the Roman Empire had once established 
throughout the whole civilized world, nor of the terrible reign of 
terror which Spain had visited upon the followers of William of 
Orange. It was unaccompanied by violence or political brigandage. 
It was a humane and polite industrial slavery at worst. In spite of 
economic oppression, the people of America were not poor. There 
was hardly any real poverty among them. As the world went in 
those days, they were extraordinarily prosperous and happy. Under 
every established rule of history the Americans should have yielded 
to England. And it was purely because they were the children, 
heirs and guardians of a superb spirit of industrial democracy, that 
they defied the laws, powers and customs of the age in an audacious 
bid for a degree of industrial democracy, which at that time was 
unknown. (22) 



THE IMPORTANCE OF THE WAR 

The Revolutionary War is the most important event in Ameri- 
can history. But it is not important because it showed that we were 
a people determined to achieve political independence. It showed 
nothing of the kind. In fact the events preceding the war proved 
beyond a reasonable doubt that we would rather have had England 
govern us than govern ourselves. But it did prove a fact which 
is of enormous importance to-day, and that is, that, above and be- 
yond all considerations of politics, our people are dedicated to one 
paramount eternal principle, the principle that men and women shall 
have the right to keep for themselves the bread that they have earned 
by the sweat of their brow. To this end, and to this end alone, the 
colonists sought government by the people — that through the in- 
strumentality of government by the people they might achieve a 
government for the people under which industrial liberty would be 
possible. 



(2* 



PART THREE 

THE CIVIL WAR 

The third period of American history covers the Civil War. 
Here we find the same principle that brought on the American 
Revolution at stake. The cotton growers of the South and the 
cotton spinners of the North combined to control the power of 
government and fasten industrial slavery upon the people. The 
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854, by which chattle slavery 
was extended into free territory, convinced the people of the North 
that the slave and cotton oligarchy, though inferior in numbers, not 
only held the controlling influence in the government, but intended 
to maintain and extend it. 

On the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Republican 
Party, John Hay made a memorable address at Jackson, Michigan. 
He thus describes the cause of the Civil War : "If the slave holders 
had been content with their unquestioned predominence they might 
for many years have controlled our political and social world. 
* but the slave holding party could not rest content. * They 
felt instinctively that if their system was permanently to endure, 
it must be extended, and to attain this object they were ready to 
risk everything." 

THE SAME PRINCIPLE AGAIN 

The lesson of the Civil War is well nigh as clear as that of the 
Revolution. It has generally been maintained that the war was 
initiated to destroy human slavery. This, of course, is utterly with- 
out foundation. Lincoln and his followers were entirely opposed to 
the abolition of slavery until 1862. The question that occupied them 
was how to take the control of government out of the hands of the 
privileged class, which was for the most part the slave holding class 
of the South. To prevent the extension of slavery and thereby 
the permanent control of government by the privileged class was 
the problem faced by the people of the North. "Slavery itself," said 
John Motley in 1863, "the concentration of much power and prop- 
erty in a few hands, and the degradation of labor throughout a 
great section of the country would have of itself created the Priv- 
ilege which it is the business of this generation of Americans to 
destroy, even without the technical and artificial advantage acquired 
by that unlucky clause of the Constitution."* 

*Foot Note. The Constitution at that time provided that each state should 
be entitled to representation in Congress in accordance with the number of its 
inhabitants, each slave being counted as the equivalent of three-fifths of a. 
white man. Thus property in slaves gave increased political power to sia-re- 
holding states. 

(24) 



When speaking of the proposed emancipation of the slaves, 
Lincoln said : "I view this matter as a practical war measure to be 
decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer 
to the suppression of the Rebellion." Lincoln bolted from the Whig 
Party, of which he had been a conspicuous and loyal supporter, first, 
because he wanted to destroy special privilege, and second, because 
he was opposed to the extension of chattel slavery, a form of special 
privilege which he hated, and the Whig Party tolerated. 

In the destruction of the slave and cotton oligarchy through the 
victory of the North, the American people once more proved that 
they had not abandoned that superb heritage of intolerance to special 
privilege which their fathers and their forefathers had bequeathed to 
them. The dominant purpose of the nation was still active. 



(25) 



PART FOUR 

AMERICA TO-DAY 

The crisis to-day is the fourth great epoch of American his- 
tory. In this crisis the first duty of American men and women, irre- 
spective of party, is to look the situation fairly in the face. 

It is reported that in 1900, when Tolstoy was desperately ill 
in the Crimea, he was approached by emissaries of the Holy Synod, 
who besought him to save his soul by subscribing to the orthodox 
canons of the Greek Church. Tolstoy listened to the arguments of 
the clerics with considerable impatience, and finally told them that, 
even if he could save his soul by professing faith in doctrines which 
he believed were false and inhuman, he nevertheless preferred to 
die an honest man, and take his chances of salvation. Nothing 
daunted, the emissaries of the Synod requested Tolstoy to think the 
matter over before making his final decision, and send his answer 
to them as soon as he had come to a conclusion. Soon after the 
interview Tolstoy's condition grew worse. He became unconscious, 
and it was feared that the great Russian patriot was sinking into 
his last sleep. But with unexpected vitality the old man rallied and, 
upon regaining consciousness, sent his answer. "Tell them," he said, 
"that even in the face of death, two and two make four." I be- 
lieve that it is no exaggeration to say that the industrial crisis in 
this country is so grave that, even in the face of the necessity of 
breaking the political traditions of a lifetime, we must look at things 
with absolute frankness. 

More and more each year we have felt about us the pressure of 
tremendous forces. Our country is going through a terrific period 
of unrest. Something is wrong. The great majority of our people 
have lost faith in the government. New schools of politics and 
economics have arisen on every side. New leaders are taking the 
reins of government and directing public opinion. The industrial 
world, but lately a dumb, powerless multitude of toilers, has suddenly 
become a vast militant army of thinking human beings. Our spirit 
of liberty has been renewed and strengthened by millions of men 
and women who, like our forefathers, have come from Europe to 
America to escape oppression and find a land of opportunity. Women 
are demanding their right of citizenship. The majority of our 
people are more unsatisfied with conditions than at any time in 
our history since the Revolutionary War. Some are asking for 
one kind of change and some for another; but all demand change — 
progress toward conditions under which they can live better and 
enjoy more fully the fruits of their toil. What is wrong? Whence 

(26) 



come the mysterious currents that are sweeping our nation onward 
away from things as they are? Where starts the mighty river of 
discontent that is destroying our respect for government, uprooting 
faith in political parties, and causing every precedent and convention 
of the old order to strain at its moorings ? What is the cause and 
purpose of this era of stress and struggle, of suffering and bitter- 
ness, and of enmity between class and class ? 

THE CAUSE OF OUR UNREST 

It is the same old story. History is repeating itself. Again 
we are going through the age-old struggle between the people and 
privilege. Once more, as in Europe when American colonization 
began, as in the colonies before the Revolution, as in the United 
States before the Civil War, the irreconcilable conflict has reached 
a crisis. Privilege has once more made the people of America mere 
tools in a vast scheme of industrial aggrandizement. The same 
arrogant spirit that says "y° u toil and work and earn bread and 
I'll eat it" has again gained a controlling position in American 
affairs. Our agitation and unrest, the portentous feelings of appre- 
hension that every thoughtful man or woman experiences to-day, 
is but a sign that America's deepest instinct of self-preservation 
has been aroused and that we are once more at work on what 
Motley called the great task of his generation, but which we know 
is the basic purpose of our civilization — the destruction of industrial 
servitude and the establishment of industrial liberty. 

To-day the drama of the great conflict is staged upon a new 
theatre, and with new scenes and actors. The massacres and 
dragonades of Louis the Fourteenth are over; the "Tenth Penny" 
tax no longer exists, the torture chambers of the Netherlands no 
longer glow with slow fires beneath twisted human flesh ; Protestants 
are not hunted through the streets of Paris and the Hague ; Calvan- 
ists do not burn Catholics at the stake as they did at Whitfield ; the 
French corvee and salt tax, and the English chimney tax are things 
of the past. Mutilation is no longer practiced upon workmen who 
combine against English employers ; men are not branded on the 
forehead because they refuse to work under the unjust conditions 
dictated by capital ; laws holding property sacred and humanity its 
bloody sacrifice have ceased to decorate the cross-roads with the 
hanged bodies of little children who have stolen bread; the earnings 
of the common man do not flow into the exchequer of privilege 
in a bloody stream of gold a yard deep, as in Alva's time. The 
whole damnable system of violent exploitation which our fore- 
fathers left their homes to escape, and even the less violent forms 
of industrial tyranny which England fastened upon the col- 
onies, has been modified if not totally abolished. But the 
fact remains, and we must face it, that, through the inexorable 
power of an economic necessity as compelling as physical bond- 
age itself, vast multitudes of our people are to-day forced into 
intolerable industrial slavery. The small business man and farmer 

(27) 



is ground down, and the whole public is exploited and impoverished 
for the benefit of a small but immensely powerful privileged group. 
Three centuries of civilization separate us from the crude days 
when our forefathers fled to the new world. Since then we have 
made enormous advances in science and industry. We have found 
and developed unparalleled wealth — a wealth many times that of 
any European nation. But in spite of all this, the average wage- 
earner of to-day lives, in or on the brink, of extreme poverty. He 
is infinitely worse off than he was in colonial days, or even fifty or 
a hundred years ago, infinitely worse off than before this wave of 
so-called prosperity occurred. What is the cause of this? 

OUR PRIVILEGED CLASS 

The privileged class in America is not unpatriotic; it has not 
consciously become the enemy of the people's welfare. In times 
of national and civic calamity it comes to the front generously. It 
is liberal toward hospitals and institutions for the blind, and it is 
strong on organized charities. It endows libraries, builds expensive 
churches, encourages foreign missions, and on the whole does its 
duty in a number of useful, though chiefly feudal, activities. 

Owing to its wealth and power, it could exercise a tremendous 
influence in the fight for economic progress — for political and social 
democracy. But it is just here that the privileged class fails, for 
whenever the element of democracy — of political or economic equal- 
ity of opportunity enters into the case, the priviliged class refuses 
to be counted in. It leaves the people's camp, makes a swift de- 
tour, and becomes the enemy. The privileged class is hostile to 
democracy, and the men and women who are fighting for democracy 
in America know this, and have learned not to look to it for help in 
times of need. 

Though increasing numbers of individuals in the privileged class 
are now beginning to feel the spirit of democracy, the vast majority 
are reactionary and unintelligent in their attitude toward economics 
and government. They still believe, with James the First, that the 
people should not meddle in the "main points of government," and, 
with that great American financier who said, "Poverty is good for 
the people: it makes them thrifty." 

Our privileged class consists of all those whom the shifting 
wheel of fortune has temporarily swung into a position where they 
are well above and beyond that battle for the crude necessaries of 
life which is the lot of the average man. Though the members of 
the privileged class have their struggle for existence, it is of a 
different kind. They are not obliged to concentrate their energies 
upon the task of making a bare living for themselves and their' 
families. The object of this small but powerful group is to keep 
itself in a position of immunity from the worries and hardships 
of the average man's struggle, in short, from the inconveniences and 
the circumscribing influences of poverty. 

(28) 



In those who have reached this position of immunity, attended 
as it is by a desirable ease, dignity of life and freedom, there de- 
velops naturally and certainly a kind of class instinct of self- 
preservation. And it is this class instinct of self-preservation that 
makes reactionaries of the privileged class. They naturally desire 
to bequeath the advantages of wealth to their children, and their 
children's children, that they, too, may escape the evils of the com- 
mon lot. They believe that the only way to do this is to hold to the 
old order, and oppose the new. Any change — any progress — may be 
the opening wedge to split the rock of privilege upon which they 
stand. They must ward off progress at all costs. Gradually and 
unconsciously this instinct of class-preservation exercises an auto- 
matic censorship on the minds of members of the privileged class. 
Its whole mental machinery halts when a progressive idea is pre- 
sented to it, and does not begin work again until its watchful mental 
censor has rushed forward, seized the unfortunate idea by the 
breeches and collar, and violently ejected it. 

To-day the progressive movement has thrown the privileged 
class of America into a continuous state of panic. It will not listen 
to reason. It does not see that even selfish considerations argue 
against class prosperity; and that, as in the time of Louis the 
Fourteenth, it is building up a top-heavy industrialism that cannot 
endure. Moreover, except in a very few cases, the descendants of 
the privileged class will be no richer than the average American. 
Only our greatest fortunes are able to hand down riches further 
than the third or fourth generation. Our laws themselves provide 
that two lives in being is the limit of a rich man's power to endow 
his posterity. "It is but three generations from shirt sleeves to 
shirt sleeves." The great grandchildren of Dives probably peddled 
shoe strings. Whoever we are, our descendants will inevitably share 
the lot of the average man. Whether we are rich or poor, the only 
sure heritage that we can hand down to our descendants is to make 
this country a good place for the average man to live in. 

Nevertheless, the privileged class is firmly opposed to a dis- 
tribution of wealth which will be a little more comfortable for the 
country. When this is even hinted at, the privileged class is panic 
stricken. Like the young man in the nonsense book, it rushes forth 
with loud cries, leaps on its horse and rides away in all directions. 

The privileged class in America is made up of men and women 
who are as humane and as public-spirited as the average. But 
they have failed in the first duty of citizenship ; they have neglected 
to think enough. 

OUR INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM 

It is not the desire of the writer to exaggerate the seriousness 
of our situation to-day. And it is not in his power to give examples 
of every kind of economic wrong from which the average man — 
the wage-earner, the farmer, the small merchant or business man 

(29) 



and their families — suffer. But a brief mention of a few instances 
may serve to emphasize the immediate necessity of taking the con- 
trol of our nation out of the hands of the privileged class and placing 
it once more in the hands of the people. 

THE TARIFF 

In 1862, in order to support the cost of the Civil War, the aver- 
age tax on dutiable imports was raised from eighteen to thirty-six 
percent., and in 1865 again raised to forty-seven percent. Though 
the war terminated half a century ago, we have been raising the 
tariff ever since. Whether the general policy of protection is wise 
or unwise need not be discussed here. But a tariff policy such as 
that in the Payne-Aldrich bill, which protects capital much and labor 
little ; which raises the cost of living, places some necessaries of life, 
such as wool, out of the people's reach, and increases the cost of 
others; which binds together our great financial and industrial 
powers and organizes them for purposes of pillage; which spreads 
trickery through trade and demoralizes Congress; is a drain on the 
people and a curse to the country. 

Predator}' industrialism is always shortsighted. As Senator 
Dolliver said, it goes on the principal that everyone is stupid. In 
the case of the tariff, it hoped that the people would never see the 
sardonic humor of "protection" applied only for the benefit of the 
strong and rich — of tariff "poor-farms" to which only great cor- 
porate interests were admitted. But if the policy of privilege to- 
ward tariff has been shortsighted, its administration of the whole 
industrial system has been more so. In its superb contempt for 
human intelligence, "big business" seems to have hoped the people 
would fail to realize that history was repeating itself, and that even, 
as in colonial days they were forced to submit to the demands of 
England's privileged class, so now they are forced to divide the 
fruit of their Labor with America's. 

THE TRUSTS 

Every investigation of our corporations, whether conducted by 
commissions or legislative committees, has uncovered the same ruth- 
less spirit of exploitation, and the same wholesale putting into prac- 
tice of this spirit. We have fresh in our minds the continuous sor- 
did larceny of the American Sugar Refining Company, planned and 
executed under the direction of its officers. The report of this com- 
pany, dated March 13th, 1912, shows that it paid 24% on its com- 
mon stock last year. Recently, too, the enormous tax that our 
great insurance companies levy on the public by reckless extrava- 
gance, financial manipulation, and control of legislatures, has been 
exposed. 

In the current report of the Commissioner of Corporations we 
find that ten water power corporations control about 60 percent 
of all the developed commercial water power in the United States, 
and about 1,500,000 horse power undeveloped. We find that twenty- 
four hydro-electric corporations, over fifty public service corpora- 

(30) 



tions, and over fifty financial houses or banks, besides railroads and 
factories, are practically controlled by twenty officers and directors of 
the General Electric Company, and its three subsidiaries. And yet 
on July 29th, the Democratic Committee on Interstate and Foreign 
Commerce reported favorably to Congress the so-called Omnibus 
Dam Bill, which proposed to hand over to corporations waterpower 
on navigable streams worth not less than $40,000,000. 

Three great express companies are to-day taxing every house- 
hold in America by a monopoly of the express business, as effectively 
as the English transportation monopoly bled our colonists in the 
18th century. 

An enormous tax on the public, in dollars and cents as well as 
in health, has been occasioned through the breaking down of the 
Pure Food Law by party politicians, active in the interest of com- 
binations of food poisoners and adulterators. 

Rapid transit systems, gas and electric companies, water com- 
panies, packing houses, fuel and oil companies, and well nigh 
every great industrial combination that supplies the people with 
the sheer necessaries of life (and which are therefore in a true 
sense public service corporations) have united in the policy of de- 
spoiling the public. 

It is fair to say that the Supreme Court of the United States 
is not an hysterical body of men. It is just to assume that their 
opinions are not governed by any inclination toward muck-raking 
or exaggeration. And yet the conclusions of its nine justices in 
regard to the Standard Oil Company are : 

"That the facts established that the assailed combina- 
tion took its birth in a purpose to unlawfully acquire wealth 
by oppressing the public and destroying the just rights of 
others, and that its entire career exemplifies an inexorable 
carrying out of such wrongful intents, since, it is asserted, 
the pathway of the combination from the beginning to the 
time of the filing of the bill is marked with constant proofs 
of wrong inflicted upon the public and is strewn with the 
wrecks resulting from crushing out, without regard to law, 
the individual rights of others." 

Oppression of the public, destruction of the rights of others, and a 
pathway strewn with wrecks; this is the Supreme Court's descrip- 
tion of the career of our most conspicuous industrial trust, the 
Standard Oil Company. And yet no economic necessity on the part 
of the company forced it into such a career. The Standard Oil 
Company will earn this year approximately $100,000,000 on its 
$98,000,000 of outstanding stock, or about 20% on the whole 
enormous value of the property which it has amassed through the 
methods described above. 

What may be said of the Standard Oil Company's methods un- 
doubtedly applies to the American Tobacco Company which last 
year earned 64% on its common stock, the Bell Telephone mon- 

(31) 



opoly and a score of powerful companies who are crippling compe- 
tition, taxing the public and crushing small business with as self- 
satisfied an egotism as England's lords of trade exhibited toward 
Colonial producers and consumers. 

The Steel Corporation, which we are informed is one of the 
more humane trusts, is in many ways no exception to the general 
rule. In spite of its career of enormous profit making, it has worked 
its army of lower grade employees unmercifully, for a wage upon 
which economic experts, quoted in the publication of the Sage 
Foundation, declare it is barely possible to maintain reasonable 
physical efficiency. Working twelve hours a day for seven days a 
week, and 365 days a year, neither satisfactory family life nor good 
citizenship are possible for these industrial slaves. In order to 
prevent its employees from uniting to protect themselves from such 
industrial bondage, the Steel Corporation has stamped out labor 
organizations in its plants and provided a system of pensions with 
bonuses only to those who are "loyal" to the company. Recently, 
however, public opinion has taken a hand in its affairs and a promise 
has been given that three shifts of eight hours each will be sub- 
stituted for two shifts of twelve hours each, an arrangement which 
has been adopted for years in the steel industry of other civilized 
countries. In England, for example, the maximum weekly hours 
of employment among steel workers of the lower grades has been 
fifty-four hours a week, instead of the seventy-two hour schedule 
enforced in our steel plants. 

A significant commentary on the lack of humanity with which 
America's steel industry has been conducted is contained in the 
report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the State of Pennsyl- 
vania. He says that in the whole seven years from 1902 to 1909 
(in spite of the increase in the steel business, and in spite of the 
rise in the cost of living), the average daily wage paid to steel 
workers in Pennsylvania rose only twenty cents. Meanwhile, in 
Allegheny County alone about five hundred men a year are killed 
in the steel industry. In the year ending June 30, 1907 (the last 
year in which the author could obtain statistics on this point), the 
average amount paid by employing companies to bereaved fam- 
ilies, either voluntary or as the result of litigation, was $534, or less 
than three-fourths of the average wages of the dead man for one 
year. 

NECESSITY MAKES MODERN INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY 

Those who defend the policy of our great employers of labor 
maintain that their treatment of employees does not constitute 
industrial slavery, inasmuch as no one is obliged to work for any 
corporation unless he wants to. He is not branded on the fore- 
head if he does not accept the employer's terms, as laborers in the 
reign of England's Stuart Kings were branded. "If he does not 
want to work twelve hours a day, or twelve hours a night," argues 
the industrial standpatter, "and if he is unsatisfied with an insuffi- 

(32) 



cient wage, he can go elsewhere." But this is exactly what he can- 
not do. The necessity for labor — for the food, shelter and clothing 
for themselves and their children — drives men and women to accept 
whatever terms are offered them with an argument as powerful, if 
less dramatic, than the brands and imprisonment of bygone times. 
As Norman Hapgood has pointed out in his admirable book "In- 
dustry and Progress" the powerful employer can to-day obtain labor 
in the United States at the lowest wages on which men are able to 
escape starvation. Such a condition of industrial slavery — such a 
pitiful inequality of wealth between the rich and the poor is utterly 
inconsistent with our American ideas. It establishes a disbelief in 
American liberty. It is an incentive to lawlessness. It is hostile 
to Christianity, and finally it is a woefully shortsighted policy. 

Two hundred years ago even that cold materialist Bacon saw 
fit to warn England of the peril of this same economic inequality 
which exists in our nation to-day. "Above all things," said he, "good 
policy is to be used, that the treasures and moneys in a state be 
not gathered into few hands; for otherwise, a state may have 
great stock, and yet starve, and money is like muck, not good ex- 
cept it be spread." We do not expect our great corporations to be 
charitable institutions, we know they are not and should not be 
so. But we do expect them to be fairly good and intelligent citizens, 
and, as an elementary qualification of good citizenship, we demand 
that they shall at least recognize two fundamental principles ; that 
the first lien upon their earnings is the payment of a just living 
wage to the labor that has produced them, and that rolling up en- 
ormous profits by overcharging the public for the absolute neces- 
sities of life is intolerable in a civilized community. 

THE EXPLOITATION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN 

Meanwhile, this same inequality of distribution of America's 
wealth, which is but another name for widespread poverty, is forc- 
ing child labor upon needy families and is menacing the vitality of 
future generations. The United States reports and the reports of the 
National Child Labor Committee show with painful detail that multi- 
tudes of children, from five to fourteen years of age, are working in 
factories of all kinds, mines, canneries, cotton mills, etc., for in- 
credibly meagre wages, and under conditions and hours of labor 
which are impossible for them to bear without serious physical de- 
terioration. In the canning industry, for example, thousands of 
children work from three in the morning until four in the after- 
noon, standing before benches the entire time and often without 
stopping for lunch. In the cotton mills of the south the same con- 
dition prevails. Children so small that they can hardly reach up to 
the looms are working from six in the morning until six at night. In 
143 factories reported on by one committee, 9,000 children were 
employed. Ten percent were working for a twelve hour day or a 
twelve hour night and were under twelve years of age. Last winter, 

(33) 



when a bill providing for an investigation of child labor was in- 
troduced at Washington, all the traditional eloquence of fiery, Demo- 
cratic Senators was exhausted in opposing it. 

The preliminary report of the New York State Factory Com- 
mission shows that, in 1911, thirteen thousand children were em- 
ployed in New York City. The last available statistics show the 
average weekly wage of all children in the state to be $3.64. 

According to the United States Census of 1910, 293,000 women 
were employed in manufacturing establishments in New York State, 
and the average wage was $6.54 a week. When we consider the 
present cost of food, clothing and shelter, the question inevitably 
arises in our minds whether $6.54 a week is a living wage for a 
single or married woman who may be without other means of 
support. 

The report of the Factory Investigating Commission also con- 
tains information upon the conditions of wages and labor in the 
"tenement industry," which may be enlightening to those who be- 
lieve that the present discontent in America is merely the result of 
muck-raking and demogogic oratory. In November, 1911, there 
were 13,268 tenements licensed for home manufacturing, which 
contained from three to forty or fifty apartments in which manu- 
facturing might be carried on. In the lower grades of industry, 
the Report states that "the average day's work will net about forty 
cents for the family, which means at least five hours' work a day 
for from five to six people." Thus, for twenty-five hours of human 
labor, these people receive forty cents. The highest family wage 
encountered by the Committee was $12 a week, for operating on 
dolls' clothes, earned by the combined labor of the father, mother 
and three children from eight to twelve years old, the children work- 
ing after school hours and on Saturday. 

The conditions of labor in the stock yards of Chicago and the 
textile mills of Lawrence are fresh in people's minds and will not 
soon be forgotten. 

THE MONEY POWER 

The dreary catalogue of shortsighted exploitation of our people 
by America's privileged class could be extended much farther. Un- 
just distribution of taxes and the evasion of taxation by the rich, 
Wall Street gambling, market raiding, pooling and every form of 
manipulation, imposes a gigantic tax on the nation which, in the 
last analysis, is paid by the average citizen. But the chief power that 
Wall Street has to divert the nation's wealth into the narrow chan- 
nels of special privilege is through what we call the Money Trust. 
By its power of extending or withholding credit, it can decide what 
new enterprises shall or shall not be initiated. It can kill or en- 
courage competition. It can regulate distribution and production, 
and exercise a commanding influence over the welfare of the whole 
country. Wall Street through the exercise of such a prerogative, has 

(34) 



had an opportunity of superb service to America. Because it has 
not felt the scope and dignity of its responsibilities, it is to-day, 
perhaps justly, recognized as a public enemy. 

THE COURTS AND THE PEOPLE 

Through the ages law has been the expression of the will of the 
privileged class. The decision of the Court of Exchequer in the 
Hampden case, the action of courts established in the Netherlands 
in Alva's time for the purpose of confiscation of property, the Dred 
Scott decision and the recent decisions of our Courts in such cases 
as the Ives case and the Bake Shop case, and the legalizing of the 
depredations of the Standard Oil and American Tobacco Companies, 
have all been milestones in the race for power between the people 
and Privilege. 

Usurping the prerogative to overrule the will of the legis- 
lative branch of the government — a prerogative that our fore- 
fathers never dreamed of and our Constitution never hinted at — 
the courts have consistently laid down the proposition that property 
rights are supreme over all others. The bench has built up a struc- 
ture of technicality and delay that favors the strong, and puts litiga- 
tion, no matter how just, practically beyond the reach of the people. 
The result is that the average citizen will put up with anything 
rather than go to law. He fears going to court as sincerely as he 
fears going to jail. Both mean delay, humiliation, loss of time, 
loss of work and generally loss of money. 

Through this lack of touch and sympathy with the problems of 
the average man in his daily struggle of existence, the courts have 
convinced the people that they have failed in fulfilling their high 
responsibilities. "But," says the spirit of Privilege, "the duty of 
a judge is, after all, the cold interpretation of law in relation to 
facts. It is a mathematical, mechanical, inhuman function, and 
should be." This line of argument is effective only with those who 
have given no real attention to facts. In a great majority of cases 
which affect public welfare, the question presented is one which 
demands a decision that is not purely intellectual. A statute pro- 
vides a prohibition against the taking of property without due process 
of law, or against some other kind of wrong or injustice, but leaves 
absolutely open the question of whether the case in point does 
or does not constitute such a wrong or injustice. Thus the de- 
ciding element in the case, upon which may depend the welfare and 
prosperity of thousands of people, the health of children or the 
honor of the nation, is an element which cannot be passed upon 
through coldly intellectual process, but which requires the exercise 
of a fine sense of moral justice, a knowledge of actual conditions and 
a sympathy with human nature. It was exactly for the reason that 
he possessed such qualities that the late Judge Harlan was so 
honored, loved and lamented by all of us. 

In law, as in nature, there is a black and a white. But there is 

(35) 



also a variety of grays shading gradually, imperceptably into black 
or white ; and it is in this baffling zone of indeterminate, changing 
human relationships that the courts must make the decisions that 
mean justice or injustice to millions of our people. Our Courts 
do not recognize the fact that a great part of the matter with which 
they must deal cannot be seen with the eyes of cold intelligence. Nor 
have they seen that law must grow and change as our nation grows 
and changes. The courts and privilege have sought to kill the pro- 
gressive growth of law. They have largely succeeded, and now 
they desire to chain the living nation to the body of a corpse. 

POLITICS AND BUSINESS 

Thus, we must face the fact that, in America, we have per- 
mitted an uncontrolled industrial oligarchy to assume, and use for 
its own purposes, a tremendous and arrogant power. 

Power to rob the people by graft tariffs; power to dominate 
two great political parties; power to refuse self-government in this 
republic; power to dictate the hours and conditions of labor for 
our multitudes of working men and women ; power to deny oppor- 
tunity in this land of opportunity; power to drive little children 
to mines, factories and sweat shops; power to crush competition 
and grind down the middleman ; power to mould our laws and curb 
the administration of justice; power to monopolize the vast natural 
resources that are the source of our nation's wealth; and, above 
all, power to fix both the wage of labor and the price of the staple 
necessaries of existence. 

The tribute paid by Americans to England's privileged class, 
before the Revolutionary War, was less formidable than that which 
Americans pay to their own privileged class to-day. Surely, when 
our forefathers dedicated this nation to freedom, a century and a 
half ago, they little dreamed of the wreck which uncontrolled in- 
dustrialism would bring to democracy. 

Industrial, rather than political, is the foundation of America's 
crisis to-day. Politics is not the real trouble. Politics, as in the 
days of our ancestors in England, France and Holland, and in our 
own Revolutionary and Civil War times, is merely the instrument 
with which "big business" has built up and maintained the system 
of industrial oppression — which is the real trouble. 

In order to make absolute and enduring this system, our two 
great political parties have been captured by privilege, and are now 
serving it with all the immense power of party machinery. To any 
fair-minded man, argument is unnecessary on this point. And to any 
clear-thinking man, the idea of carrying on the fight for industrial 
liberty within parties owned and operated by men who have spent 
their lives building up industrial slavery is without logic or common 
sense. No permanent economic reform on a large scale has ever been 
accomplished from within an old established party. Lincoln and 
Sumner could not accomplish it in the old party. William of Orange, 

(36) 



Washington, and hundreds of the world's greatest men have tried 
this experiment and failed signally. The citadels of privilege always 
have some right-thinking men in their garrisons, but no matter how 
public-spirited such men may be, their influence is outweighed a 
hundred fold by the mercenaries that crowd the walls. 

WE WILL FINISH THE FURROW OUR FATHERS 

BEGAN 

Such are the conditions of life that have brought our people to 
the fifth epoch of their history — the Progressive advance of to-day. 
We have wandered far from the purpose that our ancestors be- 
queathed to us, but at last we are on our homeward journey. The 
fulfillment of a high national destiny is at hand. 

Throughout the ages it has been the object of feudal and 
monarchical systems to keep the average man from his rightful 
heritage of the knowledge of things as they are. Throughout the 
ages the deepest instinct of mankind has taught the people that 
knowledge is power, and that only through knowledge can the fight 
for liberty and equality of opportunity be won. While the eternal 
spirit of Privilege has spread oppression through the land, while 
the people have suffered and justice has slept, a power stronger 
than politics and stronger than finance has been marshalling its 
forces to oppose the dominion of industrialism and party rule and 
to arouse the people to real citizenship. Slowly but effectively, edu- 
cation, the spirit of independent thought, which is but another name 
for the spirit of Democracy, has been doing its work. To-day for 
the first time in half a century our people are awakening to their 
moral and intellectual power. They are asserting their right to 
think for themselves — to govern themselves. They are demanding 
liberty. The old progressive spirit of our forefathers is once more 
aroused, and a new progressive movement, born of the people's suf- 
fering and upheld by their conscience and education has begun. 

The Progressive Movement is not a political movement, or for 
or against any man. It will go on irrespective of men and party 
lines, because it has the living power of the whole nation behind it 
and a constructive program of usefulness before it. It will go on 
because it is not a movement to destroy, but to rebuild our govern- 
ment. 

The Progressive Movement is radical, because it has real prob- 
lems to solve. It is a practical movement, because it deals chiefly 
with a more just distribution of wealth, which is at the very bottom 
of the bread question in every land and age. And above all, it is a 
movement toward the highest ideals of humanity, for it calls man to 
his fraternal duty toward man. 

The world is to-day in a ferment of endeavor more pregnant 
with good than ever in the ages. With immense and multiplying 
power we are forging ahead. Empty and outworn forms, prej- 

(37) 



udices and shibboleths are brushed aside. The young men and 
women of the nation are at last demanding reality. In industry, 
politics, religion ; in literature, the drama, in ethics and in every 
relation of life, our people have declared for progress, for clear 
thinking and frank speaking. Things must stand the test of reason. 
Injustice is no longer respected because it claims the authority of 
years. Crime and disease are no longer looked upon as the inevitable 
by-products of civilization. Even poverty itself, under the daring 
analysis of modern thought, has begun to be classed as a preventable 
social disease. 

In the transition toward better things, we cannot escape the 
inevitable results of struggle — the weariness, the doubts and the 
scars. The new furrow is ever hard to turn, and the day's work 
does not always bring its wage. As of yore, the old order is 
dying hard, and the new is born with sorrow and travail. But in 
spite of this and in spite of every power of Privilege, Cynicism and 
Inertia, our progress cannot be checked. America's purpose will 
be fulfilled. Only courage is needed — the courage to believe in our 
own minds and our own consciences, and to continue simply on the 
road which we have begun. But we cannot turn back if we would. 
For the people have seen the truth and the truth has made them free. 



(38) 



H 286 79 



^.•J&Tr^V 



.0* r"-'* 




V** 

. "^ cT % U <? "1 I 






*° \* 



<\ 



A 1 - < ^ : 

C . 



> 



^o« :£§§ <^ 





















^0 % • • ' 
S? .. •*• 





4 CU 




^ V 



<, 



' .o*\-^- *° 



1* .' 



*oV* 



1 









^^ 



•p 









» % A 



v. 



^ 



.«?«• / . \:m-y\ . . v% v . . . ■ : ^ 






0° 









K V 


















^ r.O 


















<4> 



■ ** 









^ 






























o 

o 

,0 




T> • 



~%rn 













A 
























j g^ UG 79 

WsSr N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 









